The compromise of men's magazines as described by George Lois — balancing the serious magazine its editors mostly want with the "girlie" shots they need to sell it — is alive and well. And the web helps the juxtaposition thrive.

Behind some of the Sixties' most iconic images — on Esquire covers, in advertisements — was…
Read more Read more

Case in point: Esquire's annual Sexiest Woman Alive franchise, newly democratized like NCAA brackets, designed to draw traffic to the Esquire website by having readers vote on match-ups. It's sex as sport. They get some points for racial and ethnic diversity (including Freida Pinto, Zoe Saldana, Joy Bryant, Eva Mendes, Emmanuelle Chriqui) if not much of any other kind. And there is a certain insouciance in some of the writeups of the pairings: